A Question About Marriage

For many years now I have been an occasional reader of your blog, and I greatly appreciate your insight on many subjects, particularly your criticism of the Left. I am, I hate to admit, an aspiring academic who is taking on enormous debt to finish a Ph.D. in sociology of religion, and am immersed in the poisonous Higher Ed world of the SIXHIRB musical litany, but that is another story for another time.

 

My question concerns choosing a wife: Can the marriage between a non-religious person and a religious person be successful and a happy state of affairs? 

 

I am an incorrigible INFP, and I thought your logical precision and holistic perception as an INTP would aid my thinking process, which is mostly intuition/feeling. You have been married quite awhile, and I respect that greatly. You say that your wife is religious, a practicing Catholic, and that you believe that to be a good thing. I agree, and thus I am in this dilemma.

 

My Romance Story: 

 

I come from a devout Mexican Catholic family from Texas, with a very religiously devout mother who is never found without a rosary, and I consider myself 'religious' and Catholic, i.e. I go to Mass every Sunday, I pray, I believe, I read the Bible, and so forth. Now, I am certainly not a saint, as the rest of my story will show.

 

I met, during a study abroad this year, a stunning young woman  who works for the United Nations. One night, our date over red wine at a cafe quickly escalated into dozens of nights of passionate, indulgent sex, and then into several trips throughout Europe in which we brought our negligent sexual passion into the creaky beds of many hotels. Sex crazed, we were.

 

Now that I am back in the States for the holidays, free from the physical presence and temptations of the Woman, the big question of our future is at hand. Should we continue or not?  

 

We have been dating now for five months, and she is wonderful in all things, successful, an excellent conversationalist, and best of all, not a feminist! But, she has no faith, does not go to church, and largely thinks religion is oppressive, and most painfully for me, she does not believe in Christianity. I would also add she is more of an agnostic than a militant atheist, since she believes in some vague afterlife, and respects my religious beliefs. 

 

'Listen to your heart' is what they say, but my heart is confused at the moment, and the damned sex monkey does not help. The Woman is wonderful, but long term speaking, once the infatuation is over through the sobering, cold water of marriage, will religion be the stone upon which we stumble? Will I be happier instead with a practicing Catholic woman? What will my Mexican-Catholic mom say when I bring home a non-believer? She won't like it, that's for sure.

 

In my opinion, I am skeptical that it will work long term, but she thinks there is no problem. What do you say?

 

Your question is:  Can the marriage between a non-religious person and a religious person be successful and a happy state of affairs? My answer is: Yes it can, but it is not likely.  And in a matter as important to one's happiness as marriage, and in a social climate as conducive to marital break-up as ours is, it is foolish to take unnecessary risks.  I would say that career and marriage, in that order, are the two most important factors in a person's  happiness.  You are on track for happiness if you can find some occupation that is personally satisfying and modestly remunerative and a  partner with whom you can enjoy an ever-deepening long-term relationship.  Religion lies deep in the religious person; for such a person to have a deep relationship with an irrreligious person is unlikely.  A wise man gambles only with what he can afford to lose; he does not gamble with matters pertaining to his long-term happiness. 

 

So careful thought is needed.  Now the organ of thought is the head, not the heart.  And you have heard me say that every man has two heads, a big one and a little one, one for thinking and one for linking.   The wise man thinks with his big head.  Of course, it would be folly to marry a woman to whom one was not strongly sexually attracted, or a woman for whom one did not feel deep affection.  But a worse folly would be allow sex organs and heart to suborn intellect.  By all means listen to your heart, but listen to your (big) head first.  Given how difficult successful marriage is, one ought to put as much as possible on one's side.  Here are some guidelines that you violate at your own risk:

• Don't marry outside your race
• Don't marry outside your religion
• Don't marry outside your social class
• Don't marry outside your generational cohort
• Don't marry outside your educational level
• Don't marry someone whose basic attitudes and values are different about, e.g., money
• Don't marry someone with no prospects
• Don't marry a needy person or if you are needy. A good marriage is an alliance of strengths
• Don't marry to escape your parents
• Don't marry young
• Don't imagine that you will be able to change your partner in any significant way.

The last point is very important.  What you see now in your partner is what you will get from here on out.  People don't change.  They are what they are.  The few exceptions prove the rule.  The wise live by rules, not exceptions, by probabilities, not possibilities.  "Probability is the very guide to life." (Bishop Butler quoting Cicero, De Natura, 5, 12) As I said, it is foolish to gamble with your happiness.  We gamble with what is inconsequential, what we can afford to lose.  So if there is anything about your potential spouse that is unacceptable, don't foolishly suppose that  you will change her.  You won't. You must take her as she is, warts and all, as she must take you.

 

There is also the business about right and wrong order.  Right Order: Finish your schooling; find a job that promises to be satisfying over the long haul and stick with it; eliminate debts and save money; get married after due consultation with both heads,  especially the big one; have children.

Wrong Order: Have children; get married; take any job to stay alive; get some schooling to avoid working in a car wash for the rest of your life.

 

I think it is also important to realize that romantic love, as blissful and intoxicating as it is, is mostly illusory.  I wouldn't want to marry a woman I wasn't madly (just the right word) in love with, but I also wouldn't want to marry a woman that I couldn't  treasure and admire and value after the romantic transports had worn off, as they most assuredly will.  Since you are a Catholic you may be open to the Platonic-Augustinian-Weilian thought that what we really want no woman or man can provide. Our hearts cannot be satisfied by any of our our earthly loves which are but sorry substitutes for the love of the Good.

 

Related: Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife

 

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